


A Toast to the Apocalypse

by quiversarrow



Category: K-pop, ONF (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 17:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21019658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiversarrow/pseuds/quiversarrow
Summary: In a world where there are actually two worlds, androids, and portals, a band of brothers who have long since lost touch with one another must reconnect to save the universe—and their friendship—as they know it.Based on the events in the music video "Why."





	A Toast to the Apocalypse

**Author's Note:**

> The MV for "Why" left me with so many questions that I decided to take things into my own hands and try to tie everything together. This was supposed to be a short story, but became closer to a novella. I hope you like it as much as I loved writing it.
> 
> FYI everything I write is depressing. Sorry lmao

FLASHBACK

Hyojin skidded to a stop, his hand outstretched. Laun had stopped running. He reached up to brush his black hair back into place. The gesture was so human that, for a moment, Hyojin could almost convince himself that he was looking at the real thing.

Then Laun turned to him. The black lines of the barcode on his neck glittered under the glare of the afternoon sun. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, simply. 

Any doubts of who the man in front of him was faded from Hyojin’s mind. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he replied, before backtracking with a slight frown. “Not unless you’ve hurt anyone yourself. I just want to find out what happened to the human version of you. The one who disappeared.”

Laun’s smile carried no humor. “You won’t like the answer.”

“I don’t like the _ question _,” Hyojin retorted. “If a man wasn’t missing, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t care.”

“And why do you care? You never knew him.”

“Why do I have to have known him to care? He’s missing. No one else is looking.”

“So heroic.”

Hyojin crossed his arms. “Don’t mock me. I only came here for an answer, and then I’ll leave you alone. At least until I find out you did something to him.”

“_I _ didn’t do anything to him.” 

Something in the way that Laun emphasized himself gave Hyojin pause. He narrowed his eyes.

“So you didn’t. But you know who did?”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t tell me.”

The corner of Laun’s mouth lifted, still humorless. “I told you that you wouldn’t like the answer. But I’ll tell you if you truly wish to know. I wasn’t made to lie, unlike your kind.”

Hyojin ignored the jab. “Tell me, then.”

Laun eyed him for what felt like an eternity, almost as if he was gauging Hyojin’s worth. His eyes were unfairly large for the task. Hyojin wondered, momentarily, whether the human Minseok’s eyes had been just as wide, black. All-knowing. 

“Our world is bigger than you think, Kim Hyojin,” he answered flatly, as if he were describing the weather. “There’s your world, the one you walk now, and then there’s the empty soul world that lies just beyond us—the other side of the coin. The human you seek lives in the soul world now.”

“And how did he get there?”

Laun’s tone changed. He was gentle now, gentler than Hyojin had ever heard him, or anyone, really. 

“My creator. We call it the Box. It calls itself God.”

Hyojin swallowed. “And how did it...how did it create you?”

“An android is built from DNA sampled from a human, combined with the Box’s energy. The human original will fade out of our world and into the soul world once enough androids occupy its space here. Equilibrium must be maintained in both worlds.”

Hyojin could only focus on one thing, one horrible thought. “There are more of you?”

“There are many of me,” Laun replied, quite calm for the situation. His gaze softened. “And soon, there will be many of you.”

“Of...me? I don’t understand.”

Laun had that gentle look in his eyes again, and it was at this point that Hyojin realized it wasn’t a gentle look at all. It wasn’t meant to soothe. It was a look of sympathy. 

“I think you do.”

He turned to leave, and Hyojin knew that this time he wouldn’t turn around again. He could already feel it happening.

Oh, God.

* * *

CURRENT

Hero padded after Seungjoon as the latter led him down a dark hallway in the abandoned historicals’ ruin. He felt heavy in the clothes that Seungjoon had let him borrow, clothes that Seungjoon had said were Hyojin’s but felt as if they belonged to an entirely different body. They were far too big for Hero’s liking. 

The shoes were alright though, even if they did make his footsteps spring up and down like he was walking on mattress foam. At any rate, he already felt out of place. It didn’t help that Seungjoon had decided to bring him somewhere as dark, cramped, and dusty as the historicals’ ruin. 

And yet here they were, on Seungjoon’s little hero’s journey. 

If you want to call yourself Hero, then you should know how to be one, Seungjoon had told him before they left, staring him down with steely eyes, his hunter’s gun comfortably tucked into the holster at his side.

Hero didn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d chosen the name because Seungjoon himself had called him that, back when he’d decided that he wanted to be more than Kim Hyojin’s android clone. You damned hero, Seungjoon had said when Hero had turned on his fellow androids. He still felt their throats in his hands. 

He hadn’t liked it. But he liked the awed tone in Seungjoon’s voice, even if the owner of the voice carried a gun. And he liked having a friend. 

The hallway had narrowed so much that they had to walk single file, and by the time they weren’t, they’d emerged into a closed chamber with a high ceiling and stone walls. Technological gear and parts that seemed to come from another era were scattered across the floor and piled up against the walls. The place smelled like ozone and chlorine. In the center of the room stood a tall glass cylinder bubbling with blue liquid. Gas billowed out of the top and bottom of the tank, snaking around Hero and Seungjoon’s legs before dissipating against the walls. 

Inside the tank was a figure with a white-knuckled hand on the glass. 

Hero sucked in a breath and took a step back. “No.”

“It’s alright. It’s not done yet,” said Seungjoon. He stood very still, his hand on his gun. 

“That’s not what I meant,” Hero snapped. He felt nauseated. The hand moved behind the glass, just a few inches down, skin pruned blue. “Whatever you’re going to ask me to do…”

Seungjoon’s hand moved, much quicker than the hand behind the glass. He gripped Hero’s shoulder and outstretched his other hand, the handle of the gun facing him. “Shoot it.”

Hero’s blood ran cold. “You can’t ask me to do that. You know I can’t.”

“You said you’d prove yourself today.”

“With valor! This is...this is _ murder _.”

“That thing isn’t even alive yet.”

“It is,” Hero snarled, his eyes never leaving the tank. He fought Seungjoon’s grip off of him, pushed him away. He couldn’t see the creature’s eyes, but he could imagine them in his head. Black, unwritten, squinting in pain. Floating in that tank like something dead, unable to breathe, burning as the blue liquid kept it in stasis...Hero knew it hurt like a bitch. He remembered. 

Seungjoon managed to cajole the gun into Hero’s limp hands. His fingers tightened around it only because he didn’t want the clatter of the gun against the ground to alert anything else living in the ruin of their presence. The fact that the Box had a tank here…

“Trust the Box to use the old historicals’ lab to create its little minions,” Seungjoon mused..

“What?” Hero whispered. Seungjoon raised an eyebrow at him. 

“You really thought this place was the Box’s creation? As powerful as it thinks it is, it didn’t create itself. What better than to use Mother’s old kitchen for the new cooking?”

The disdain in Seungjoon’s voice squeezed Hero’s chest. “Killing one android isn’t going to do anything,” he said. “Just because what the Box is doing is wrong doesn’t mean we should go around killing innocents.”

“You killed those other Hyojins.”

“They were killing you. It was a fair trade.”

“That’s the Box part of you talking,” Seungjoon retorted. “Shoot it, Hero. Or I will.”

Hero shuddered. The gun trembled in his hands. He turned to the tank and lifted the gun. Pointed. Aimed. His heart pounded in his chest. You damned hero. 

He took a deep breath, and then lowered his hand. Head bowed, he held the gun back out to Seungjoon, not meeting his eyes.

“You know I can’t,” he said again, low and apologetic. “I can’t choose to be Hyojin, but I can choose not to be a killer anymore.” 

Seungjoon shrugged, although his expression was dark. “Suit yourself.”

He shot the tank as easily as breathing. Hero flinched as if he was the one that his friend had shot. Maybe, in another reality, he had been. Dark blue liquid oozed across the floor, speckled with glass shards and the black, unwritten blood of the incomplete android. In the center of it, the body lay unmoving, twisted, buried in glass. 

“And with that, a human is safer,” Seungjoon said. “One less android and the balance tips in our favor.” He eyed Hero meaningfully, but Hero missed it because he was staring at the floor, at the blood. 

Just then, a noise roared up from behind them. Something about it—a familiar ache—sent Hero stumbling towards the sound until he regained his footing. Stopped. Turned. And saw Seungjoon’s gun pointed straight at him. 

Or not at him. Hero gasped as cloaked bodies rushed past him, masks over their faces, masks that he knew hid black, unwritten eyes. They smelled of ozone, of chlorine. Of home.

Hero and Seungjoon watched as the mob of unwritten androids made a great arc around the body of their fallen brethren as they ran, wailing, into the deeper parts of the ruin. Then Seungjoon met Hero’s eyes, searching him for answers. This time, Hero held his gaze, and held it until Seungjoon was the one to look down.

“For every human, dozens of androids are made to maintain equilibrium. You just killed one. These are family, and they are afraid.”

* * *

Minkyun missed his family. He didn’t remember them, but he missed them anyway. He missed the thought of them. He missed having people who loved him, who mattered more than the stupid pair of goggles he’d found in the historicals’ ruin that could show him the world. 

He didn’t want the world. He wanted Hyojin, and Minseok. He wanted Jaeyoung. He wanted his team back again so that he could escape the abandonment that seethed in his chest. Those were his brothers, or the closest thing that he’d had to brothers, and they had abandoned him. 

No.

They hadn’t abandoned him.

They had disappeared. 

_ Wasn’t it the same thing? _

No, it wasn’t.

He had a headache now, and kicked the goggles as far from him as he could get them. He then crossed the room and opened a drawer to address the other curiosity he’d found in the ruin.

The key glittered in the dim light of the lowest floor in the crumbling tower that he’d made his home. It wasn’t the historicals’ ruin, quite, but it had a similar feel. He’d always liked it that way. But now, after having brought a piece of the ruin back with him, he felt that living in an echo of the ruin was not the best idea he’d ever had. 

It made him feel watched. Like the choices he was making were decided already, moves on an automatic chessboard. 

He shuddered, and found himself walking back to the goggles. They looked like ordinary laboratory goggles, except one lens glowed blue and the other green. They reeked of the Box, and they whispered things to him that made him feel poisoned, icy. 

_ They never liked you. That’s why they left. That’s why they didn’t ask you to come. _

The thing with the goggles was that they could show him the world. Both worlds. Minkyun just had to strap the goggles to his face and ask them to show him something, and he’d be shown it. Anytime. Anywhere. 

It was a tantalizing bait. Sometimes, especially when he was lonely, it was too much to resist. 

He’d already used it to watch Hyojin and Laun, one of Minseok’s androids, as they met before Hyojin’s demise. He’d used it to see Hero, one of Hyojin’s androids, kill his brethren. He’d used it to watch Seungjoon visit the place where Hyojin had faded and shoot the ground three times in wordless fury before falling to his knees. He’d watched Seungjoon shoot a body in a tank, and he’d watched the mob of fleeing bodies that had followed. 

After his brothers had left him, Minkyun had spent his life watching, waiting. Wanting. And so when he put on the goggles this time, he wanted Jaeyoung. 

* * *

Jaeyoung was dead. Wyatt was not. Sometimes, though, Wyatt wasn’t sure he knew the difference. 

He hadn’t been there when his human counterpart had been killed. But he remembered it. Not as his own memory, of course, but as a dream. An afterthought. It bubbled up at times, triggered by random moments. The sight of a teakettle would bring the whine of boiling water to his ears, the smell of tea leaves and the iron tang of blood. Kitchen tiles reminded him that he’d walked, that morning, across them barefoot. The cold of them paired so terribly with the fiery burn of the blade between his shoulders. 

Wyatt hadn’t been the one to kill Jaeyoung. But the one who had killed him had also worn Jaeyoung’s face. Wyatt couldn’t believe that they shared the same DNA, however small an amount. He tried to see himself in the killer as he strangled him on the floor of Jaeyoung’s kitchen hours later. 

But he couldn’t. The man died remorseless, and Wyatt searched Jaeyoung’s home for supplies to clean it of its owner’s blood. The whole time he did, he thought about what had gone wrong. Why was he filled with too much Jaeyoung, too much human and kindness, when an android like him had been devoid of it all?

It took Wyatt very little effort to, for all intents and purposes, become Jaeyoung. Not that anyone would have cared that Jaeyoung was gone. The man hadn’t lived with another human since childhood, when he’d lived with a few friends who Wyatt doubted would remember him. 

Wyatt didn’t choose to become Jaeyoung to deceive anyone. He didn’t really choose at all. There was just too much overlap between him and his human self that he found himself accepting Jaeyoung’s peacekeeping role as if it was his all along. He took Jaeyoung’s key to the soul world and began searching for portals, writing down their locations, guarding them from both sides. He learned to hold the key in just the right way so that he could control where he ended up. 

As he gained more control over his portal-jumping, however, he started to hear a voice. And Wyatt was familiar enough with thoughts that weren’t his own to know when something was speaking to him through him. It was this way that he met the Box for the first time—as an enemy. From then on, his life became less peacekeeping and more running. 

The Box wanted its key. And so Wyatt ran. He ran for his life each time he found a portal, because he needed to outrun the speed of thought, the speed of corruption. The part of him that wasn’t Jaeyoung was just a loudspeaker for the Box. 

It was because of this that running into a human in the soul world frightened him. The soul world was generally empty, at least of humans. But balance had to be held with the real world, whatever the cost. So when a human was pulled over, the soul world tended to corral them, to give them their own island with a fence of the sea. Anomalies and wrongness deserved their own space. 

The human that Wyatt had run into was no exception. The soul world had planted him in an endless forest. He walked with his back to Wyatt, and Wyatt very much wanted to keep it that way. He inched backwards, clutching the key in its perfect position, and then froze as a branch cracked under his foot. 

The human’s reaction was immediate. He turned, startled like a wood animal, and then raced forward. It took Wyatt a moment to process that the human was running AT him, and then another to recognize that the human was not, in fact, running at HIM, but at the portal behind him. 

“No!” he bellowed, and batted the human away from the portal with every ounce of Jaeyoung’s strength. The human landed hard, hard enough to wind him, but not enough to deter him. He was back on his feet again and running, but this time Wyatt stepped in front of the doorway and raised his arms at both sides as a barrier. 

It was childish, but effective. The human deflated.

“You’re an android, aren’t you?” he asked. 

“Yes.”

“And you work for the Box.”

“No.”

“No?”

Wyatt had thought he was quite definitive, but apparently not. “No. I do not work for the Box.”

“Then why won’t you let me leave?”

“Because you wouldn’t survive,” Wyatt said. He gestured at the portal. “If anyone enters a portal uninvited, they are eliminated. This doesn’t have anything to do with the Box. It’s just the way the two worlds work.” 

“Then how come you’re here?”

Wyatt was careful not to reveal the key in his hand, which he was slowly positioning back into its perfect setup. Farther back in his head, the Box hummed its approval. 

“Because I have an invitation.”

“From the Box?”

“Yes.”

“But you said you didn’t work for it.”

“I don’t. And so I’d rather not talk about this, in case it’s listening.” Which, of course, it was. The fact that it was happy about the whole situation set Wyatt on edge. Why would the Box be happy about him talking to a lost human? What did it have to gain?

The human studied his face, and then crossed his arms. “You’re hiding something from me.”

“Who’s to say I’m not hiding something from everyone?”

“Are you?”

Wyatt thought of his purpose—the one he had stolen from a dead human who looked like him—and didn’t respond. Instead, he turned back to the portal, which had begun to glitch in and out of sight. He gritted his teeth. 

“I’m running out of time, human.”

“My name is Changyoon.”

“Very well, Changyoon. I’m running out of time.”

“To do what?”

Wyatt gestured at the portal. “To go. I came here to assess a disturbance, but it seems that there is nothing wrong. Unless you’ve seen anything?”

Changyoon let out a dry laugh, his shoulders hunched. “Maybe my life was too fucking depressing for the universe and it decided to send out a distress signal.”

“I doubt that would be the case.”

“You don’t understand sarcasm, do you?”

“I’m not human.”

“Noted.”

A long pause. Wyatt tightened his grip on the key and then turned back to the fading portal. _ Do it, _ the Box whispered in his ear, gleefully. He pushed the voice out of his mind and was about to leap through the portal when an arm grabbed his.

He turned to find Changyoon beseeching him. It had begun to rain, and streaks of it poured over the human’s face and body like tears. 

“Please. There must be a way to bring me with you.”

Wyatt should have refused. Every part of him that was Jaeyoung urged him to refuse. But he found himself nodding, exasperated and tired. He held out his hand with the key clutched in his fingers and Changyoon wrapped his warm fingers around it. Wyatt had forgotten how warm humans were. 

He dove through the portal. When he emerged on the other side, he was alone. His hand sported three scratches from Changyoon’s desperate fingers, bleeding android black. In his head, the Box laughed at a joke he didn’t understand.

* * *

The joke that Wyatt didn’t understand was on Minkyun, who flopped onto a ragged couch that he’d bought at an online garage sale. It looked out of place in his antique stone tower of a home, but he liked it that way.

Or at least, usually he did. Now, with the echo of the Box simpering at him about how he could never save his brothers because _ of course _ a human couldn’t pass through a portal without an invitation from the Box itself...at any rate, he had a headache. The out-of-place couch reminded him of his headache. He curled into a fetal position and made a vaguely animal noise before uncurling and heading outside. 

Minkyun still lived in the real world, as a human who had never been sampled (at least as far as he was aware), but his slice of the real world felt as if it had been harvested from the soul world. There wasn’t a human in sight for miles, and the only landmark present was the tower. Around it sprawled a field of dry grass dotted with small trees and shrubbery. 

He could walk for hours and never see a soul. And after an hour of whispered horrors from the Box, that’s exactly what he planned to do. As he walked, he thought about all the things he absolutely did not want to use the goggles for ever again. 

He didn’t want to see Hyojin. He loved the man for recruiting him to find out what happened to Minseok, but since then the leader of their little detective band had made himself scarce. Minkyun could only catch glimpses of him in the soul world, and most of the time he was just running. He wasn’t sure when it had started, but he’d begun to resent his old leader for not doing more, fearing less. He wasn’t sure how much of it was the Box, and how much himself. 

He couldn’t see Minseok at all. He could see Laun, occasionally, but only in the past. Both had made themselves impossible to find, and it bothered Minkyun deeply. If they were dead, why couldn’t he see them? 

Jaeyoung was dead. Minkyun knew that now, but he found himself seeing bits of his childhood friend in the android that had replaced him. There was something genuine about Wyatt, and Minkyun admired how he dealt with the Box. Which was that he didn’t deal with the Box at all. Minkyun wished he was like that, but he was inevitably drawn back to those goggles. 

It was that way this day, too. Before he really knew what had happened, he had returned to the tower and gone back to them, picked them up, put them on. But even if his addiction to the goggles was involuntary, he could always control what he wanted to see. And he knew he didn’t want to see any of his old friends. 

_ They abandoned you. They chose others over you. They sacrificed themselves instead of you. _

“Shut the fuck up,” Minkyun grumbled aloud.

He wanted to see Changyoon. There was no pain to be had there, at least of his own.

* * *

FLASHBACK 

“Yuto! Did you find it?” Changyoon demanded. He stumbled over a few blocks of rubble to reach his friend, who stood frozen on the other side of the ruined plaza. 

“No. But I think—ugh.” Yuto rubbed his head. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything. Something is off about this place.”

Changyoon glanced at the piles of cinder block rubble around them, and then at the spire-framed doorways that led into deeper, unknown parts of the historicals’ ruin. A breeze that definitely shouldn’t have been able to travel through the narrow halls wafted out to them, rustling Changyoon’s hair. He shuddered, then hid it. 

“It’s a ruin. Aren’t they always creepy?” he asked. 

“This one isn’t creepy. It’s downright wrong,” Yuto said. His tone sent another shudder down Changyoon’s spine. He jumped when Yuto brushed his shoulder. 

“Don’t do that,” he snapped. “You’re the one who just said this place is off.”

Yuto dropped his hand. “Sorry. Let’s head to that gallery down the road. Seungjoon said it’s been connected to the historicals, way before they made it public.”

“You’re really gonna listen to the hunter?”

“Why not? Just because he’s got a gun? He knows a shit ton about the double worlds’ lore. If he says this gallery is linked to the historicals, I’d believe him. And anything historicals-related might be hiding the key.”

Changyoon sighed. A simple yes would have sufficed. “Alright.”

The road from the historicals’ ruin to the gallery started out as a cobbled trail marked with small piles of rubble, and then gradually flattened into a clean dirt path. From there, it broke out into the street on the more rural end of the city. A few trash bins dotted the street, but the residential area itself was mostly small cottages and, at the end of the street, a slanted concrete slab with a door. 

Slapped on the door was a handwritten note with the words: ENTRANCE FEE: ₩18000. Beside it, a self-pay machine. Yuto cursed under his breath. 

“Hey, that’s not too much for a museum,” Changyoon said. He patted down his pants for his wallet. By the time, he had the money, however, Yuto had vanished. Boot prints sank into the sand around the back wall of the building and then rounded the corner.

“Yuto?” Changyoon called. Nothing. He pocketed his wallet and money and started after the boot prints. He couldn’t remember whether they had been there when he and Yuto had first arrived, or whether his friend had made them, but they were his only lead.

“You call yourself a detective?” he muttered under his breath. “What are you even detecting if you can’t find your friend…”

He stopped short as he glimpsed movement behind the opposite corner of the museum. 

“Yuto?”

Still nothing. Changyoon’s heart pounded. Someone else was here. Clumsily, he reached for the gun that he carried, the one that Seungjoon had given him despite his not knowing how to use it. 

You’ll look more like a threat, Seungjoon had said, simply. I don’t have time to teach you, and it’s better than nothing. 

Now, Changyoon desperately wanted to have been taught, but this was all he had. Sweat pooled in his palm as he gripped the gun handle. He didn’t even know how to turn the safety off. He couldn’t shake that this was all a terrible idea, but Yuto was somewhere in the museum and Changyoon was determined not to leave without him.

So if he had to learn how to shoot a man on the fly, then that was what he would do.

He walked around to the other side of the museum. No one was there. Heaving a steadying breath, he headed back to the front and found that the door with the entrance fee sign was slightly ajar. He took another breath and walked inside, gun drawn, and... 

Shit. 

“SHIT,” he hissed aloud, but nothing could be heard under the wail of the red alarm. Whoever had come in before Changyoon was much better at sneaking into museums than he was. It helped that Changyoon had never done anything like breaking into a museum, or breaking into anywhere, really. That was always Yuto’s job; Changyoon was generally on guard duty. 

Something rustled farther into the museum, so loud that it broke through the sound of the alarm. He rushed towards it, the gun still raised, and reached the back entrance just in time to see a shadowy figure slip through it. The figure leapt over a small fence and raced around the side of the museum, so nimble that Changyoon was out of breath by the time he caught up. 

“Wait!”

The figure turned, and a nearby streetlight sent a shock of light across his face, his blond hair. Changyoon’s heart leapt, and then plummeted. He raised his gun, trying to keep his hands as level as his voice. 

“Is he gone?”

“Are you next?” The android with Yuto’s face cocked his head, the barcode on his neck flashing silver as it caught the light. 

“Shut the hell up,” Changyoon snarled. His mind pinwheeled. He was trapped. His friend was gone. He couldn’t use the damn gun in his hands. His fingers searched blindly, pulling what he hoped was the safety. 

The shot rang out so loud that he was almost convinced he’d done it. But when he recovered from the recoil, Yuto’s face hovered over his with a very not-Yuto, self-satisfied look. The android snapped his fingers and more figures appeared out of nothing, melting out of the shadows. 

They all wore Changyoon’s face. They smiled with his mouth. They were the last thing he saw before the android version of his friend sent a punch swinging at his face. 

* * *

CURRENT

Minkyun lay on his back, squinting at the pockmarks in the ceiling. What Changyoon was missing, he mused, was an outsider’s perspective, or at least the perspective of a pair of omniscient, evil goggles. What Changyoon couldn’t see while he was busy searching for Yuto was that both he and his friend were already glitching as their hold on the real world loosened. Both had been sampled long before then. 

It was why Yuto had felt that everything was off. It was. 

The goggles called to Minkyun from where he’d left them on the kitchen table. In the back of his head, he could hear the Box whispering, but couldn’t make out any of what it was saying. He sighed, stood, and crossed the room. 

It was time to watch U. Both he and the Box were curious about the gallery that Seungjoon had recommended. And both of them knew that U was a sadist, though one of them was happier about it. If U was interested in the gallery, it meant that the gallery had power. 

* * *

U was not interested in photography. He wasn’t interested in anything much, apart from feeling alive, which he didn’t often. 

Evenings like this, though, lit him up electric. He wiped his bloody knuckles on his jacket, noting the red stain they left behind. It didn’t look like blood to him. He studied it for a moment before glancing over his shoulder, where the other androids were already slinking into the shadows. 

Their duty was done. Their human was safely on the other side of the portal, and now they would have nothing to do with him. 

U was fine with that. He had other plans. He stooped back down to grab the human’s discarded gun, cocked it, and fired twice in the direction of the museum. He didn’t need the alarm to go off due to another pesky visitor. It would be just his luck if the next one actually proved to be a threat. Although maybe that would be interesting. 

He didn’t have time for it, though. If his human counterpart managed to find the pesky visitor in the soul world, and then the two of them came into contact with the equally pesky gatekeeper who kept jumping worlds...things wouldn’t be interesting. They would just become irritating.

U hated irritating. 

He sauntered back into the museum, this time without having to hunt. He’d been through all the rooms already. He marched directly to the photo he needed and, without pausing, snatched it off the wall and ripped it in half. For good measure, he ripped it again. 

Four pieces of a beautiful, forested island fluttered to the ground. U looked at them with his chin raised. His lip curled, and for a moment he thought to say something. A last word. An insult, maybe. _ Try shooting me through that, bitch. _

But he didn’t feel alive enough for it. He just spat, and left.

* * *

Minkyun hadn’t been paying attention to the forested island. Well. That wasn’t quite true. He paid attention to it long enough to notice that one of the other photos wasn’t quite like it. 

His attention shifted from U to this new photo, a little to the right of him. It was the same size, brightly lit, and pictured a pile of rubble surrounded by stone spires. It didn’t surprise Minkyun that there was a photo of the historicals’ ruin in the gallery. Of course there would be. The two were as connected as he was with his brothers, or with his goggles. 

What did surprise him was that the pile of rubble was populated. Overpopulated, really. The rubble was laden with bodies. However, there wasn’t a drop of black blood to be seen. Each body was pristine, as if each had fallen asleep in its green schoolboy sweaters and perfectly tailored pants. 

That was what really caught Minkyun’s attention. The air drained out of his lungs. He knew that outfit. He’d seen it on Laun. These creatures were all him, all androids. But they weren’t bleeding. They weren’t hurt. They were just...in stasis. 

Minkyun threw off his goggles. This was why he had never been able to find traces of Minseok past the time when he was still searching with Hyojin. The androids weren’t dead. Of course they weren’t. 

He forced the goggles back onto his face and said, frantically, “Show me the clones of Kim Minseok. Show me them unwritten.”

The historicals’ ruin rose around him, the cracked pieces of stone just as they appeared in the photo in the gallery. He narrowed his vision and the bodies were suddenly all around him. Up close, what he’d guessed was undeniably clear. The androids wore Minseok’s clothes, but above the collars of their sweatshirts were the blank faces that Hero had so feared behind the glass in the cloning tank. 

Minkyun closed his eyes. There was only one way this could have happened, one way that asking for Minseok’s death time and time again had been fruitless. 

“Show me Minseok,” Minkyun whispered, hating his own words. “Show me his elimination.”

Wyatt’s words—if anyone enters a portal uninvited, they are eliminated—rang in the back of his mind as the goggles searched, sending him through a tunnel of winking purple light. Minseok had never died. A figure appeared at the end of the tunnel from the other side of it, its hand outstretched. Minkyun stifled a cry even though he could see what was coming. The figure’s fingers splayed in desperation, its mouth parted, and then it faded into purple light. 

Once, before Minkyun had known Changyoon’s past, he had watched him fall to his knees. He had wondered how much it would take to break someone like that. He now knew the answer: the loss of a brother, without ever saying goodbye. 

Changyoon thought his loss was forever. But Minkyun knew it. 

None of his friends were ever coming back. He had no purpose left, no lost friends to seek. Hyojin’s search was over without Laun. Jaeyoung was dead. Minseok was erased, from both worlds, forever. 

It was over. 

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

* * *

Wyatt was the first to see the end of the worlds. He stood on the mountaintop where Jaeyoung’s cottage stood and watched as fiery comets rained from the sky. His body was at war with itself, joyful light dancing across the mechanical parts of his body that he’d inherited from the Box, while the part of him that was Jaeyoung despaired. 

Someone cleared his throat behind him. He turned slowly, without wariness. There was no need to be wary when the world was ending. He didn’t immediately recognize his visitors, but when they neared, he raised one of his eyebrows. 

“This is unexpected.”

“The world is ending,” Seungjoon said tersely. “Raise your expectations.” Surprisingly, his gun wasn’t visible, but it was very likely tucked in a padded pocket of his very large, very frayed backpack. 

Behind Seungjoon was a man that looked very much like Hyojin, except with very different hair. Uglier hair, to be sure. Wyatt had always liked Hyojin as a fiery redhead. His android seemed much less commanding with hair that reminded him distinctly of a skunk. 

Seungjoon waved in the android’s direction. “This is Hero.”

“Hero?”

“Yes. Don’t ask me why he calls himself that.”

Something like hurt flashed across Hero’s face before it was neatly filed away. Wyatt’s gaze lingered on him for a moment before the mountaintop flooded with orange light. He then turned to Seungjoon, who was glaring after the newest comet like he was trying to decide how best to shoot it. 

“We should head back,” Wyatt said at last, gesturing at the cottage. “It’s at least easier to pretend that everything is alright in there.”

* * *

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

_ It was over. _

No. 

_ It’s over. Stop fighting. _

No. 

_ They brought you chaos. You’re only continuing it. _

No. 

_ What is there to say no to? They abandoned you, didn’t they? _

They abandoned me. 

_ Yes. It’s over. _

No. They’re gone. I…

_ You are mine, _ the Box purred. 

No.

_ No? _

I am mine. 

I am mine. 

I am mine.

“I am mine,” said Minkyun. The goggles clattered to the floor. He lurched forward after them, about to pick them up again when he reared himself back. 

No.

He stomped on the goggles, hard. One of the lenses popped out and skittered across the floor as he kicked it. The whispering in the back of his head stopped, at last, but the headache was still there. Groaning, he tried to stumble to the bathroom but the urge was too much. He hurtled to one of the windows, flung it open, and vomited. 

It wasn’t until after he was done heaving that he noticed the orange light. He looked up, saw the comets, and retched again. No. No, he hadn’t done this.

But he had. He’d let the Box convince him that there was no point in trying anymore, because at the time there hadn’t been. But now, the field outside was burning. 

He crawled back to his couch, still sick to his stomach, and grabbed the Box’s key from where he’d left it. In his mind’s eye, he could see himself standing there with the goggles over his face, a small replica of the Box shining in yellow over the key in his hand. Hundreds of tiny comets pelted through the air around it, a perfect mirror to what was happening outside.

He’d done this. He squeezed the key in his hand, its teeth biting into his palm. This wasn’t what he’d wanted. He’d wanted his friends. The Box had given him death tenfold, revenge tenfold, but that hadn’t brought them back.

* * *

“A toast to the apocalypse,” said Wyatt, lifting a mug of Jaeyoung’s favorite tea. The scent of jasmine filled the cottage. The windows were closed, so the grisly orange light of the comet shower couldn’t punctuate Wyatt’s words. Instead, Wyatt had put on some music and turned on all the bright, artificial white and blue lights that Jaeyoung owned. 

It sort of felt as if both worlds had frozen for a moment of peacemaking, which Wyatt appreciated, except that his table was only half-occupied and his guests were another android and the man who had once tried to kill him. 

Seungjoon’s toast reflected the sentiment, in that he didn’t toast. He just drank without blowing on the tea, not flinching for an instant at the heat. Meanwhile, Hero did toast, but proceeded to lower his mug and swirl a spoon around in it instead of drinking. Neither of them spoke. 

Sighing, Wyatt stood and crossed the kitchen back into his living room. He grabbed the Box’s key and returned with it, sliding it across the table until it skidded to a halt in front of Seungjoon. 

“So you have one?” 

“One of what?” asked Wyatt. 

“The Box’s keys,” Seungjoon clarified. 

Wyatt’s brow furrowed. “There’s more than one?”

“There are two. Or at least, there should be two. The double worlds’ lore always prophesied that there would be two keys to both worlds—one for the dark and one for the light.”

“So which one am I?”

“That’s up to you, peacekeeper,” Seungjoon said. “Or should I call you Wyatt?”

“You may call me Wyatt.”

“That’s character development. You would never let us call you anything other than ‘peacekeeper’ when you used to work for us.”

“With you.”

Seungjoon raised an eyebrow. “You called yourself a mercenary, and you would hardly ever meet with us in person. That’s called working for someone.”

“Mm,” said Wyatt. Everything Seungjoon said was true, but Wyatt felt that he had at least made some improvements in the past few years. 

“Mm yourself,” Seungjoon replied pleasantly, before grabbing the key and inspecting it. He clearly had no idea how to hold the key correctly, which Wyatt appreciated. He had no desire to summon a portal in his kitchen. Besides, if there were comets burning the real world, he didn’t want to see what was happening to the soul world. 

“So what’s the plan?” Hero asked. Wyatt jumped. He’d forgotten Hyojin’s android was even there. 

“There is no plan. The world is ending. We drink tea and watch it fall.”

“And that’s it? What about trying to save Hyojin?”

“Save him?” Wyatt repeated. “What is there to save?”

“A whole human life,” Hero said flatly, crossing his arms. “We should make an effort not to be killers.”

“Does that include me?” Seungjoon demanded.

“If you’d like it to.”

“No thanks.” 

Hero said nothing, but his eyes never left Seungjoon until the latter sighed.

“I agree with Wyatt. We really can’t do much now that the world has already started to end. It would be different if we could stop the person doing this, but they seem to have already done it. I’d bet they have the second key, and without it we lose...eh, probably 90% of our fighting options.”

“What if you could have both?”

All three of the invited visitors in Wyatt’s home jumped at the sound of a new voice. Its owner, bedraggled, but steely-eyed, stepped through the cottage door. 

“Who are you?” Hero demanded at the same time that Seungjoon whirled on Wyatt and shouted, “You didn’t lock the door?!”

“It’s the apocalypse,” Wyatt replied with a shrug, and was about to add something more when the visitor’s answer stopped him short. Or more, his actions did.

“My name is Minkyun,” the man said, holding out his palm. In it sat a golden key. “I started all of this. I’m here to end it, too.”

* * *

Seungjoon’s first instinct was to shoot the man dead. His second instinct was to shoot down his first thought. Hero was right; murder couldn’t solve everything. And besides, the man before them was Park Minkyun, who Seungjoon knew had worked with Hyojin on finding Laun and Minseok. He also had, if Seungjoon remembered correctly, been friends with Minseok and Jaeyoung, though at different times in their childhoods. 

It wouldn’t do to shoot a man like that on sight, especially when said man carried one of the Box’s keys. It also helped that the man was dying.

Seungjoon had noticed almost immediately. Minkyun had taken the seat Wyatt offered him at the dining table and then hunched over it, clutching his chest. His face had gone ghostly white. He’d stood there, frozen, and then slumped in his chair.

“You haven’t by any chance been having terrible headaches and nausea, have you?” Seungjoon took the opportunity to ask. 

Minkyun blinked at him, which was all the answer he needed. 

Seungjoon leaned back in his chair. “That’s what I thought.”

“What was what you thought?” asked Hero. The kid was forever behind on everything. Seungjoon was willing to bet that he only paid attention to half, maybe a quarter of everything he said.

“He’s dying.”

“Ah,” said Minkyun, softly. 

Hero, however, yelped, “What!”

Seungjoon let out a breath through his teeth. “You’re sympathizing with him, too? He’s just caused the end of two worlds. If you’re going to call anyone’s death a fair trade, it should be his.”

“Seungjoon,” Wyatt said, his voice low. “You’re guests in my home. All of you. Courtesy, please.”

“Courtesy to our killer?”

“Do you want to shoot him?” Wyatt responded in the same low tone. 

Seungjoon sighed and half-raised his hands in surrender. “No.”

“Good. Then what’s the plan?”

Seungjoon let out a clipped laugh. “Why are you asking me?”

“You said 90% of our fighting chance lay with us having the perpetrator here, with his key.”

“Yes, but I meant BEFORE he ended the world.”

“I haven’t ended it yet,” Minkyun said. “If I had, I’d be dead. That’s what’s killing me, isn’t it? Whatever the Box used to cause all of this.”

“Yes,” Seungjoon admitted. “It used you as an energy source. Humans are the best battery out there. The Box might be sentient, but it sure as hell isn’t alive. Anything it does, it needs a human—or part of one—to do it.”

“So that’s what the key drew from me? My...humanity?”

Wyatt’s brow creased. “I doubt it. I don’t think it drew anything from you. When I use my key to pass through a portal, I end up drained, but not of anything that’s mine. If it took my humanity, there’d be only Box left in me.”

Seungjoon nodded. “Makes sense. The Box can’t take anything from you; that’s not how it works. It uses vessels to channel its own power. The keys just direct that power through whoever holds them.”

“Like an amplifier,” said Hero. 

“Right.”

“And if the amplifier breaks…”

Seungjoon glanced at Minkyun, who had managed to lean himself on his chair in a way that made it look like he had the strength to hold up his body. It was an admirable act, but the whiteness in his face and paleness of his lips indicated otherwise.

“If the amplifier breaks, he dies.”

“And it’ll all continue without me, won’t it?” Minkyun whispered. “Even though I’m here.”

“It’ll just take longer to destroy everything,” Seungjoon said dryly, “but yes. On the other hand...” He reached out and grabbed the other key that Minkyun had placed on the table. It was far too light for the weight it carried. 

He turned to Minkyun. “You did this with one key.”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”

“Balance has to be maintained,” Hero said, his eyes lighting up. “So why didn’t the Box use both?”

“Because I’m not its lackey, perhaps?” growled Wyatt.

“It could have changed you if it wanted,” Minkyun muttered. “I know you heard the whispers. I could see it in your face.”

Wyatt ogled at him. “You could...see it?”

“No secrets left, I suppose. The Box got into my head using these goggles that I found in the historicals’ ruin. They let me see anything I wanted as long as I asked. But every time I put them on, my head…” He grimaced. “It hasn’t been mine for a while, to say in the least.”

“But you were spying on me. On us all, I imagine.”

“I was gathering information. You all know how close Minseok and I were when we used to live in the city. I came to Hyojin first, because his search seemed promising and, frankly, he was the only one looking...but then the Box gave me something that could help me look anywhere I wanted. You can’t blame me.”

“No,” Seungjoon agreed. “But I can judge.” 

“Judge how you want. It’s all over. But I’m here now and...don’t tell me you don’t find it slightly ironic that he is too.” He gestured without turning his head. Seungjoon followed his finger and raised an eyebrow.

“Hero?”

Hero was also staring down Minkyun’s arm like he wasn’t sure how to address it. 

“You put him in the clothes that he wore when you found him, didn’t you? Which was when he first changed.”

Seungjoon wasn’t easily confused. With all of his knowledge of the double worlds that he’d gathered after Hyojin’s disappearance, he’d assumed that nothing about the Box’s antics could catch him off guard. Maybe piss him off, sure. The apocalypse wasn’t a fun subject. 

But right then, as Minkyun continued to point at Hero’s clothes, he had no idea what was going on. He stared at his friend, the friend who had saved his life when he’d never asked. His eyes dropped to the green sweater, the white buttoned-down shirt, the neat grey pants. He stared, and then finally, he realized. 

He’d never met Minseok or Laun. But Hyojin had always carried a photo of them in his bag to remind him of his purpose. Seungjoon had seen it often enough to have the image imprinted in his mind. 

“I don’t understand,” he said at last. “Why?”

“Minseok never died.” Minkyun’s eyes flicked to Wyatt. “He tried to run through a portal, and was eliminated. I used to be able to find glimpses of him, but now there’s almost nothing. Except...”

He pulled a photo out of his pocket and laid it on the table. 

Seungjoon studied the comatose Launs and whistled softly. “Running through the portal eliminates the human, so the worlds balance it out. Life for an equal amount of life. It’s true for creation, but for destruction, too.” 

His mind raced, connecting the dots. Eliminated humans unwrote androids. Humans and androids needed the Box’s keys to travel through portals. Seungjoon’s team had two keys, two androids, and a human who knew how to end the world. 

“I think,” he said slowly. “I think I have a plan.”

* * *

“We’re making a new Box,” said Hero. 

Seungjoon rolled his eyes. “Yes. Why do you sound so skeptical?”

“Because it’s impossible.”

They all stood outside again, feet away from the sheer cliff that delineated the mountain’s edge. The air still smoked orange with comets, and every once in a while one would fly a little too close for comfort over their heads. 

Even though Minkyun had assured all of them that he’d never send the comets to a little mountain as remote and abandoned as this one, Hero felt little comfort. He was trying his best not to be a killer, and this whole thing felt like murder by proxy—murder simply by not being the person murdered.

“But is it, though?” Seungjoon asked, jolting Hero back into the present. The comet that crashed by them seconds later also did the trick. For a moment, he thought Seungjoon was accusing him of murder, but then he realized. 

“It is. It’s impossible in every definitive way. The Box has been here long before any of us; how could we create another one?”

“You really don’t listen to anything I say, do you? Yes, the Box was here before us, but it was _ created _.” 

“By the historicals.”

“Exactly. I guess you did listen a little. Anyway, the historicals were hyper aware that everything comes in twos. They built two keys. They built two monuments to the worlds: the ruin, which used to be the central building of their city, and the old temple, which is now the photo gallery.”

“And contains natural portals to the soul world,” supplied Minkyun. “And snapshots of the past.” He was still holding the photo of the dead Launs, which he waved as an example.

“Right,” said Seungjoon. “I’m going to pretend I knew that. But onwards. My point is that the historicals built the Box to populate the soul world, which they believed was empty. How better to populate it than to populate it in twos? One human, one android on the other side. But they failed, because neither android nor human could cross through the portal without an invitation.”

“But an invitation from whom?” Hero demanded. “Why would they need an invitation from the Box if they made it?”

Seungjoon pointed at him. “Exactly. That part of it always confused me, too. But really, I was talking about it earlier. The Box is only a vessel for an outer power, a power that existed before it. The Box uses that power, but it doesn’t own it.”

“Which means that there’s a parallel version of that power, but raw, in the soul world,” said Wyatt, his brow furrowed. Seungjoon nodded.

“That’s the theory. The lore doesn’t say it. But it ticks all the boxes, and right now we haven’t got time for fact-checking.” Another comet flew over their heads as if to punctuate his statement. They all paused to look at it, and then Seungjoon clapped his hands.

“Right. So. Wyatt, Minkyun. We’ve got two keys now. You guys think you can make a Box out of energy from the other side?”

“Easy task,” Minkyun muttered.

“No, it’s not,” said Wyatt at the same time that Seungjoon protested, “_ I _ understand sarcasm, you know. And no one else has a plan.”

“It’s a good plan, Seungjoon,” said Wyatt after a long pause. “But I agree with Hero. It’s impossible, at least for now.”

“Why?”

“You underestimate the keys’ abilities. From what you’ve explained to me, the keys were created by the historicals from parts of the Box and were meant to hone the Box’s abilities. But they were also meant to curb them.”

“In case it went rogue, which it did. The historicals wanted its strongest abilities to be separate from it.”

“The Box was never meant to use the keys, yes?”

“Yes. Your point?”

Wyatt gestured at himself. “I am also part Box. This is why I’m always running. The portals don’t stay open very long for me.” 

Seungjoon turned to Minkyun, who just shook his head. His pallor was verging on green.

“Even if I didn’t feel like dying right now, I couldn’t do it. The key and the goggles were what the Box used to get into my head. That shit doesn’t stop. If I even hold the key right now I hear whispers from it. If I were to use it to try to create something…” He shuddered. “I would finish ending the world.” 

There were more plans thrown into the air, but Hero didn’t hear them. He just watched Seungjoon’s head swivel back and forth between the worlds’ peacekeeper and the worlds’ destroyer and felt like crying. The answer was clear, of course, but he felt like crying anyway. All he’d ever wanted was to be something more, and now that he had a chance to, he could see how much it would cost him.

He just wanted to live. That was all any android wanted, really. But if he did, he would end up a killer. Maybe by proxy, but a killer anyway. He hated that more. 

“Seungjoon,” he said quietly, when he’d finally summoned up the courage. You damned hero. You damned hero, you. “I’ll do it. It’s the only way.” 

“Shut up,” Seungjoon snapped immediately. 

“Why should he?” Wyatt asked, cocking his head. “He has enough of the Box in him to connect to the soul world’s energy and create a new Box. And his human counterpart isn’t dead. If he were to clone himself, he could recreate enough of Hyojin’s energy to uphold the equilibrium.”

“He’s never heard the Box,” Minkyun added. “Never been swayed by it. And if we’re going to really end this like you’re suggesting, we’re going to want to grab all of the humans we can. He could bring them back with him.”

“No. We’re not sending Hero. If anything, I’ll go,” Seungjoon cut in. He turned to Wyatt, his eyes piercing him. “Please. I’m not losing another Hyojin.”

“I’m not Hyojin,” Hero whispered. Seungjoon whirled on him, his expression neatly deadpan to hide whatever was roiling within him. 

“You are the closest I have.” 

“I’m not a killer, Seungjoon. I couldn’t kill that one android in the tank. Do you really think I’d sit idly by when I could stop the whole world from dying?”

“You damned—”

“_ Don’t. _”

Seungjoon stared at him mid-word, eyes widening at the ferocity in Hero’s tone. Hero hadn’t meant it that way, but every ounce of his fear and his desire to live had rushed into that one word. For a moment, understanding flashed across Seungjoon’s eyes. Then it was gone. 

“Fine.” He turned on his heel and walked back towards the cottage. Hero watched him go. 

“It’s the most reasonable solution,” Wyatt said after a long pause.

“I know,” said Hero.

“Why couldn’t he see that?” Minkyun demanded, though his voice was weak. 

Hero bit his lip. “He does. But he’s afraid.”

“Are you?”

“I can’t be.”

* * *

Hero stood at the edge of the city. He didn’t know if the soul world would have its parallel. Everything he’d heard about the place had been ruins and seas and forests and islands. 

He would miss the bright lights and the voices. 

“Hey,” said such a voice behind him. “Don’t forget these.”

Hero turned and accepted the two keys from Seungjoon. The latter had come with him to walk him back to the rooftop of Hyojin’s old apartment. 

They went in silence. It occurred to Hero that the two of them were different people now, and he couldn’t quite remember when things had changed. He now had a few weeks of training jumping portals and creating small copies of the Box from Wyatt and Minkyun, respectively, but he didn’t think that had done it. 

What he did know was that Seungjoon could no longer look him in the eye. Even now, he walked behind Hero with his gun raised and his back turned, patrolling like a guard. 

At last, they reached the rooftop: a flat slab of concrete speckled with stains from rain showers and black smoke marks from passing comets. The unwritten android that Minkyun had found—or more accurately, re-found—stood in wait, hooded and masked. 

Hero swallowed heavily, and then turned to Seungjoon, who stared at the ground. 

“Please. Just look at me once before I go,” Hero said at last.

Seungjoon looked up. His eyes were dark, sadder than Hero had ever seen them, but they held his as if it were easy. However, Hero knew from his friend’s frown that it wasn’t. 

“You know I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have to.”

“Just bring him back, alright? Bring them all back.” 

Hero sighed. “Of course.”

“You know when you throw that Box at the portal, you’ve really got to aim, right? That thing is going to be big, bigger than you could ever predict…”

“Yes, I know what to do.”

“I hope for all of our sakes that you do.”

“There’s no need to be afraid. It can’t get any worse than this.”

Seungjoon’s voice broke. “Encouraging.”

They stared at each other for a moment, almost daring each other to say goodbye. Then Hero turned and walked towards his android, keys in hand. They would need to be in just the right position, Wyatt had said, if he wanted to take them with him for the fade. 

He only turned back when Seungjoon grabbed his arm and squeezed it.

“I’ll miss you, brother. But I trust you’ll be back. So no need to tell you to piss off.”

Before Hero could say anything in return, he was down the stairs and gone. Hero let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and then thrust out a hand at the unwritten android.

He didn’t need to make it perfect. There were already many of him. He just needed to make it enough of him that the soul world would accept it as an equivalent exchange, even if that meant making it more of the Box than of Hyojin. 

The keys quivered in his palm as the Box’s energy flooded through him, eroding his body under a pulsating yellow glow. Behind the mask, the android’s face radiated the same light. 

Hero closed his eyes and whispered a mantra to remind himself that he was alive, and what he had to do. He wondered if, several stories down, Seungjoon was saying the same thing. 

* * *

EPILOGUE 

U was the first to see the end. Watching the great yellow cube that had hung in the sky for a grand total of three weeks crumble put him in an impressively sour mood. There was nothing quite as irritating as seeing your mother—or at least the thing that made you—rain out of the sky in pieces.

It didn’t make it any better that the portals all went defunct after the fall of said almighty cube. U had enjoyed the savage triumph of trapping that pesky little key-hunter in his forest island, but now all the photos in the holy gallery were blank and U was bored. 

So he just walked, kicking anything that got in his way, until he ran into a cloaked figure that caught his interest as it whacked into a wall, cried out in pain, and then shuffled in the other direction. The act was very familiar, but shocking to see in a world where order was somehow rising out of the chaos U had worked so hard to sow. 

He sauntered after the cloaked figure and waited for another disaster. Sure enough, it grabbed some food off of a nearby vendor’s booth and walked away, only to be aggressively mobbed by the owner and the rest of the line. U continued his saunter, kicked the owner in the balls, threw another customer against a wall, and then watched in satisfaction as the others fled. 

The figure stood very still with its hot sandwich, looking utterly bemused. U saluted at it.

“Hello. How long since you were cooked up?” he asked. 

“Don’t know,” said the figure. “He left me.”

U blinked. “The Box didn’t create you?” He’d never seen any androids that weren’t created by the almighty yellow cube, but he supposed there was always time for a surprise. He generally hated surprises, though. At least enough for him to kill over it occasionally. 

The figure lowered his hood, and U blinked again. He frowned, and then his frown broke into a grin. He could work with this one. 

“Oh,” he said. “Now this is interesting. I take it your dear creator never bothered to name you?”

The android of Kim Hyojin that was very much not an android of Kim Hyojin’s grimaced and shook its head. Some pieces of sandwich fell to the ground. 

U made a noise of sympathy, or at least he tried to. “What a pity. Now, why don’t you let me name you and then we can do something fun? I’ll be your leader, and we can be a little team.”

The android’s eyes brightened at the word “team.” It nodded.

“Very well,” U said with a gleaming smile. “Your name is Havoc. This world is just starting to clean itself up. Let’s change that, shall we?”


End file.
